An "Earthly Paradise": William Morris's Later Prose Romances

William Norris, prominent Pre-Raphaelite poet and early Socialist thinker, devoted the final six years of his life not to poetry or Socialism, but to the creation of a new literary genre, the prose romance. Following the initial publication of the later prose romances between 1890-1896, few critics have attempted to analyze Norris's last works; moreover, those who have done so, have generally either dismissed the romances as escapist fantasies or twisted the narratives of these romances in an attempt to demonstrate the presence of Marxist allegories thought to accord with Norris's Socialism. Yet Norris's later prose romances, uniting his philosophies about art and society within the representational format of fiction, are escapist only insofar as are other utopian works, which tend to take on fantastic characteristics as a means of countering the prevailing conventions of the society they would replace. Nor do the later prose romances merely represent a continuation of Norris's Socialist philosophies: rather, they form the culmination of the utopian vision which Norris had been developing throughout his career--a vision which had, in fact, drawn him to Socialism in the 1880's as a possible method of achieving the ideal society. An analysis of the later prose romances which focuses on the motivating values of the characters who are able to achieve versions of Morris's ideal society reveals the underlying principles of Norris's utopian philosophy. The later prose romances hold an essential place, therefore, within a complete understanding of Norris's artistic vision.